Infinity
by drawnoncatwhiskers
Summary: Ross doesn't believe in himself. He never has. But one day at his Support Group, he meets someone who might just change that. Who might give him a beautiful little infinity. (Based on The Fault In Our Stars)
1. Chapter 1

A/N- So, I have disappeared off the face of the earth for a while, but now I'm 3/4 back and will do my best to write. Although I'm probably not gonna update my current stories for a very long time. Sorry. :)

Also, in about 3 weeks time, I have finals, so I'm gonna be studying lots as well. And an English project is due next Friday, final choir concert this Thursday, too much.

Anyway, I hope you enjoy this and I will look forward to your reviews!

And read at the bottom! It's important (and slightly regarding this c:)

Summary: Ross doesn't believe in himself. He never has. But one day at his Support Group, he meets someone who might just change that. Who might give him a beautiful little infinity. (Based on The Fault In Our Stars)

Characters: Ross Lynch, Ellington Ratliff, Stormie Lynch, Mark Lynch, Riker Lynch, Rocky Lynch, Laura Marano, possibly others

Genres: Romance, Hurt/Comfort, Friendship, Tragedy

* * *

"Mom, don't make me go," I complain. I will find a way to get out of this.

"Ross, you need to socialize," she states.

"Twitter _**is**_ socialization," I fire back. "I talk to my friends."

"You need to see them in the flesh for once."

"I don't think the friends I talk to here will be at Support Group."

"You're going, Ross. It'll be good for you."

I sigh and get up. "Only if you promise to watch _Top Chef _with me when I get home."

"I will. Just promise me you'll have a good time," she said.

"I half-promise," I say. She realizes that's all she's getting (I think) and drives me to the church where Support Group is held.

We pull up. I grab my oxygen tank quickly and get out of the car.

"Have fun," my mom calls after me. "Make friends!" I nod and keep walking.

I debate taking the elevator, but elevators are sort of a last-days thing, so I settle on the stairs.

I glance at the juice-and-cookies section and quickly grab a Styrofoam cup. When I turn around to sit, I see a boy, about my age, maybe older, staring at me. It's not the weird staring, either. It's the sort of 'I might like you' staring that cancer kids never really get.

I head over to my usual seat, beside my friend Riker, who has the boy sat on his other side.

Riker has eye cancer, and has since he was little. He had to have his left eye cut out as a child, so now he has one real eye and one glass one, and he has to wear these big thick glasses that make half his head look like eyes.

"Ross, hey," he says as I sit. I mumble a hello as Daniel, the only person in the room over 18, begins the meeting like he regularly does: telling us his cancer story.

Daniel had cancer in his testicles, which basically means it may have been fatal if they hadn't have found it as soon as they did. Now he is happy, NEC and tells children with cancer how lucky he was and how lucky we may be and—

This is where we go around the circle telling our name, age, diagnosis, and how we are doing. Ross Lynch. Seventeen. Thyroid with mets in my lungs. And I'm okay.

When it gets to me, I say exactly that. Then Riker.

"Riker," Daniel says. "Perhaps you'd like to tell us what's going on."

"Yeah, okay," he says. "I'm Riker. Seventeen. And they're saying I'm getting surgery in a couple weeks, after which I'll be completely blind. I'm not complaining, because even though I'll be completely blind, I could have it worse. My girlfriend helps, and friends like Ellington."

"We're here for you," Daniel says. "Let Riker hear it." And we all say, in monotone, "We're here for you."

He was next. "I'm Ellington Ratliff. I'm eighteen. I had a little osteosarcoma a year and a half ago, but I'm here today at Riker's request."

"And how are you?" Daniel asks.

"I'm grand," Ellington Ratliff smiles.

Neither I nor Ellington Ratliff talked for the rest of the meeting. Afterwards, as we all left the church, he stops me at the top of the stairs.

"What's your name?" he asks.

"Ross," I reply.

"No," he says. "your full name."

"Ross Shor Lynch." Just as he looks like he's gonna say something else, Riker walks up to us.

"That was worse than you said," Ellington Ratliff says to him.

"I told you it was bleak."

"Why do you bother?"

"I don't know. I guess it... kind of helps?" Riker says. "Oh, Laura's waiting. Better go. Gotta see her while I can."

After Riker leaves, we just stand there. I glance over to him and realize he's looking at me.

"What?" I ask.

"Nothing," he says.

"Why are you staring at me?"

He smiles. "Because you're good-looking. I enjoy watching good-looking people, and I will not deny myself the simple pleasures of existence."

I scoff and say, "I'm not good—"

"You're like Chris Evans. Like _Captain America_ Chris Evans," he says.

"Never seen it," I say.

"Really?" he asks. "Skinny blonde boy defies authority with a little help from authority itself. Sounds like you, from what I can tell so far."

He was almost flirting. I don't see how, he looks like a guy who would like girls, not guys. Truthfully, not all the same for me.

"So, see you next time?" I tilt my oxygen cart onto it's wheels and start walking, keeping apace with his limp.

"You should see it," he says. "_Captain America_, I mean."

I stop. "I hardly know you, Ellington Ratliff. You could be a serial killer."

"True enough, Ross Shor." He walks past me, as steadily as possible on what I determined to be a prosthetic leg. Osteosarcoma often times takes a limb to check you out.

I don't see my mom yet, but I see Riker and a short, dark haired girl kissing against the wall. "Always," he whispers, and she does the same.

"What's with the always?"

"They'll always love each other. They'll always be there for the other," Ellington explained.

We stand there a bit longer, and he then takes out a pack of cigarettes and flips it open.

"Oh my god. You just ruined it."

"Ruined what?" he smiled that crooked smile, cigarette dangling from his mouth.

"When a nice guy who compares you to actors and invites you to watch a movie has that one flaw, and yours happens to be that although you had fricking cancer, you decide to attempt to acquire yet more cancer. Let me just tell you that not being able to breathe mega-sucks. How disappointing," I say. I take off across the parking lot as I see my mom pull up.

"They don't kill you unless you light them," he says. I stop. "I've never lit one. It's a metaphor, you see? You put the killing thing right where it will kill you but you don't give it the power to kill."

"A metaphor," I say.

"A metaphor," he repeats.

"You choose your actions based on their metaphorical resonances?"

"Oh, yes, I'm a big fan of metaphors, Ross Shor."

I turn to the car window. "I'm going to watch a movie with Ellington Ratliff."

* * *

A/N- I hope you enjoyed!

IMPORTANT NOTE

Okay, so I've had this idea since I first read this (about January) and I finally decided how I wanted to do it. However, I could leave it as is or continue. I believe it may work either way, so let me know if you want me to continue!

But also, I will update if you want me to, it just may not be right away and there may not be a specific day. I will whenever I can.

AND before you say, I know this isn't exactly like the book, I wanted to make it somewhat my own. :)

REVIEW IF YOU WANT ME TO CONTINUE WITH IT!


	2. Chapter 2

A/N- Holy cow. I'm sure you expected this earlier, as I'm also sure you didn't expect it to be as long as it is. I'm sorry. But I guess it makes up for how long I made you wait. :)

I'm also sorry if Ross sounds too girlish, it is based on TFIOS, after all.

Disclaimer: I don't own anything you recognize.

* * *

Ellington Ratliff drives horrendously. Whether he's stopping or starting, everything just has a JOLT. Every time he brakes I fly forward, and my head snaps back whenever he slams on the gas. I may be nervous—sitting in the car of a strange boy on the way to his house, aware that my crap lungs complicate things—but his driving is so poor that I can't think of anything else.

We've gone nearly a mile in silence when Ellington says, "I failed the driving test three times."

"You don't say," I say, sarcastic tone resonating.

He laughs. "Well, I can't feel pressure in this here 'leg', if you'd call it that, and I can't get the hang of driving left-footed. My doctors say most amputees can drive with absolutely no problem, but not me, I guess. Anyway, I go in for my fourth, and it goes about like this is going." Half a mile in front of us, a light turns red. He slams on the brakes, tossing me into the seat belt. "Sorry. I swear to God that I'm trying to be gentle. Right, anyway, so at the end of the test, I totally thought I'd failed yet again, but the instructor was like, 'Your driving is unpleasant, but it isn't technically unsafe.'"

"I don't think I agree," I laugh. "I smell Cancer Perk." Cancer Perks are those little things cancer kids get that other kids don't: basketballs signed by sports heroes, free passes on late homework, unearned driver's licenses, etc.

"Total Cancer Perk," he says. The light turns green. I brace myself as he hits the gas.

"You know they have hand controls for people who can't use their legs," I point out.

"Yeah," he says. "Maybe someday." He sighs in a sort of way that makes me wonder whether he was confident about the existence of _someday_. I know osteosarcoma is highly curable, but still.

There are a number of ways to establish someone's survival expectations without actually asking. I use the classic "So, are you in school?" Usually your parents pull you out of school at some point if they're expecting you to bite it.

"Yeah," he says. "I'm at North Central. A year behind though, I'm sophomore. You?"

I consider lying. No one likes a corpse, after all. But after struggling with my thoughts for awhile, I tell the truth. "No, my parents withdrew me three years ago."

"Three years?" he repeats, surprised.

I tell Ellington the broad outline of my miracle: diagnosed with Stage IV thyroid cancer when I was 13. It was, we were told, incurable.

I had a surgery they called _radical neck dissection_, which is just about as fun as it sounds. And then radiation. Then, they tried a bit of chemo for my lung tumours. The tumours shrank, but then grew. By then I was 14. My lungs started to fill up with water. I was looking pretty much dead— my hands and feet ballooned, my skin cracked, my lips were perpetually blue. They've got a drug that makes you feel not so terrified of the fact that you can't breathe, and I had loads of it flowing to me through a PICC line, and more than a dozen other drugs as well.

Even with all of this, there's a certain unpleasant feeling to drowning, particularly when it all happens over the course of a few months. I finally ended up in ICU with pneumonia, and my mom had knelt beside my bed and said, "Are you ready?", and I told her that I was, and my dad kept saying he loved me in a voice that was not breaking so much as already broken, and I kept saying I loved him and mom too, and everyone was holding hands, and I just couldn't seem to catch my breath, and my lungs were desperate, gasping, pulling me out of the bed trying to find a position that could get them air, and I was embarrassed by this desperation, disgusted that they wouldn't let go. I remember my mom telling me it was okay, that I'd be okay, and my dad was trying so hard not to sob that when he did, which was often, it was an earthquake of jurassic proportions. And I remember just wanting to be asleep.

Everyone thought I was done, but my Cancer Doctor Maria managed to get some fluid out of my lungs, and shortly after the antibiotics they'd given me for the pneumonia kicked in.

I woke, and soon got into one of those experimental trials that are famous in Cancerville for Not Working. The drug they used was Phalanxifor, this molecule designed to attach itself to cancer cells and slow their growth. It didn't work in 70 percent of people, but it worked in me. The tumours finally shrank, and stayed shrunk. Yay, Phalanxifor! In the past eighteen months, my mets have hardly grown, leaving me with lungs that truly suck at their job but could conceivably, struggle along indefinitely with the help of drizzled oxygen and daily doses of Phalaxifor.

Admittedly, my miracle had only resulted in a bit of purchased time, though I did not know the size of the bit, yet. But when telling Ellington Ratliff, I paint the prettiest possible picture, embellishing the miraculousness of my miracle.

"So know you gotta go back to school," he says.

"I can't," I say, "because I already got my GED, so I'm taking classes at MCC." MCC is our community college.

"A college boy," he says, nodding. "That explains your aura of sophistication." He smirks. A punch his upper arm.

We make a wheels-screeching turn into a subdivision with eight foot high stucco walls. His house is first on the left, a two story colonial. We jerk into his driveway.

I follow him inside. A wooden plaque in the entryway is engraved with the words _Home Is Where the Heart Is_, and the entire house turns out to be covered in things like this. _Good Friends Are Hard to Find and Impossible to Forget_ reads a picture above the coatrack. _True Love Is Born from Hard Times_ says a needlepointed pillow in their antiquely furnished living room. Ellington sees me reading. "My parents call them 'Encouragements'," he explains. "They're everywhere."

...

His parents call him Ell. They're making enchiladas in the kitchen (a piece of glass above the sink read_ Family Is Forever_). His mom is putting chicken in tortillas, which his dad then rolls up and places in a glass pan. They don't seem too surprised by my arrival, which kind of made sense: the fact that Ellington made me feel special didn't necessarily indicate that I was. Maybe he brought home a different girl or guy every night to show her movies (and maybe do other things; you never know).

"This is Ross Shor," he says as an introduction.

"Just Ross," I correct him.

"How's it going, Ross?" asks Ell's dad. He's tall—almost as tall as Ell—and skinny in a way that parents usually aren't.

"Okay," I answer.

"How was Riker's Support Group?"

"It was amazing," Ell says, sarcasm obvious.

"You're such a downer," his mom says. "Ross, do you like it?"

I pause for a second, trying to figure out if my response should please Ellington or his parents. "Most of the people are really nice." I finally say.

"That's just what we found with families at Memorial when we were in the thick of things with Ell's treatment," his dad says. "Everyone was so kind, and strong. In the darkest of days, the Lord puts the best people in your life."

"Quick, dad, get me a throw pillow and some thread because that definitely needs to be an Encouragement." Ellington says, and his dad looks annoyed, but then he says, "I'm kidding, Dad. I like the freaking Encouragements. I do. I just can't admit it because I'm a teenage boy." His dad rolls his eyes.

"You're joining us for dinner?" his mom asks me. She was small, and slightly mousy.

"I guess?" I say. "I have to be home by ten."

They talked to me a bit. About how the enchiladas were Famous Ratliff Enchiladas, and Not To Be Missed, and how Ell's curfew is also ten, and how distrustful they are about anyone who gives their kids curfews _any_ later than ten, and was I in school—"he's a college student," Ellington interjects—and how extraordinary the weather was for March, and they don't even once ask me about my diagnosis, which was weird, but wonderful. And then Ellington says, "Ross and I are going to watch _Captain America_ so he can see his filmic dopplegänger, 2011-2014 Chris Evans."

"The living room TV is yours for the using," his dad says.

"I actually think we're gonna watch it in the basement."

"Good try. Living room."

"But I wanna show Ross Shor the basement," Ellington says.

"Then show him the basement, and then come upstairs and watch your movie." says his dad.

"Fine," he mumbles. I follow him down hardwood stairs to a huge basement bedroom. A shelf at my shoulder level reaches all the way around the room, and it's full with basketball memorabilia: trophies full of those golden plastic men performing basketball tricks, signed balls and shoes, etc.

"I used to play basketball," he explains.

"You must've been good."

"I wasn't too bad, but the shoes and balls are Cancer Perks." He walks towards the TV, where a giant pile of DVDs and video games were arranged into a large pyramid shape. He bent over and snatched _Captain America: The First Avenger_ and _The Winter Soldier_. "I was all about resurrecting the lost art of the midrange jumper, but then one day I was shooting free throws—just standing at the foul line in the North Central gym shooting from a rack of balls. All at once, I couldn't figure out why I was methodically tossing a spherical object through a toroidal object. It seemed like the stupidest thing I could be doing.

"I started thinking about how little kids put cylindrical pegs through a circular hole, and how they do it for so long once they figure how, and how basketball was just a more aerobic version of that same thing. Anyway, for a long time, I just kept sinking free throws. I hit eighty in a row, my all-time personal best, but as I kept going, I kept feeling more and more like a two year old. And then, for some odd reason, I started thinking about hurdlers. Are you feeling alright?"

Seconds ago, I'd taken a seat on his little brown couch. I get a bit tired when I have to stand a lot, there'd been the kitchen and the stairs, and then more standing, which was a lot of standing for me, and I don't want to faint or anything. "I'm fine, just listening. Hurdlers?"

"Yeah. I don't even know why. I started thinking about them running their races, and jumping over these totally arbitrary objects that had been put in their way. And I wondered if they ever thought, 'this would go faster if we just got rid of the hurdles.'"

"This was before your diagnosis?" I ask, hoping I'm not overstepping.

"Well, there's that, too." He smiles. "The day of the existentially fraught free throws was, coincidentally, my last day of dual-leggedness. I had a weekend between the day they scheduled it and when it happened; my own little glimpse of what Riker is going through."

I nod. I like Ellington Ratliff. I really, really, really like him. I like the way his story ended with someone else. I like his voice. I like that he took _existentially fraught free throws_. And I like that he has two names. I've always liked when people have two names, because you get to choose what you call them: Ell or Ellington. Me, I've always been just Ross, univalent Ross.

"So, what's your story?" he asks, sitting next to me.

"I already told you my story. I was diagnosed when I—"

"No, not your cancer story. Your real story. Interests, hobbies, passions, weird fetishes, et cetera." I stay silent. "Don't tell me you're one of those who become their disease. I know too many people like that. It's disheartening. Like, cancer is in the growth business, right? The taking-people-over business. But, surely, you haven't let it succeed prematurely." he says.

It occurs to me that perhaps I have. I struggle with how I want to pitch myself to Ellington Ratliff, which enthusiasms to embrace. And in the silence that follows, it occurs to me that I'm not very interesting. "I am quite unextraordinary."

"I reject that out of hand. Think of something you like. Anything."

"I like reading."

"What do you read?"

"Everything. From hideous romance to pretentious fiction to poetry. Whatever."

"Do you write poetry, too?"

"N-no, I don't write."

"There!" Ellington shouts. "Ross Shor, you are the only teenager in the entire country who prefers reading poetry to writing it. I bet you've read tons of great books. What's your favourite?"

"Um..." I stall. I don't like to tell people about my favourite book, _An Imperial Affliction_. It's not even like the book's that good or anything, it's just that the author understands me in weird and impossible ways. Even so, I tell him. "It's called _An Imperial Affliction."_

"I am going to read this book, as long as you read this thrilling novelization of my favourite video game." He hands me a book, called _The Price of Dawn_.

I take the book, he takes mine, and we head up the stairs.

...

We watch the movies on the couch. About three-quarters through the first one, Ell's mom comes in and serves the enchiladas, which are pretty damn delicious.

The movies are about the heroic Steve Rogers who tried to join the army, but they wouldn't let him, until he did this Super Soldier Serum thing which made him the ideal soldier. In the first one, his best friend died and then he comes back in the second one, as 'The Winter Soldier.' All in all, I enjoy them.

As the credits roll in the second one, I stand. "I should go. Class in the morning." Ellington stands, as well, and searches for his keys.

I drive Ellington's car home with Ellington riding shotgun. He plays a bit of music, which is good, but not as good as it is to him, because I don't already know the songs.

I pull into my driveway and look over to him. He really is wonderful.

"Ross Shor," he says, my name feeling new and better in his voice. "It has been a pleasure to make your acquaintance."

"Ditto, Mr. Ratliff." I say.

"May I see you again?"

I smile. "Yeah."

"Tomorrow?" he asks.

"Patience, grasshopper. You don't want to seem overeager."

"Right, that's why I said tomorrow. I want to see you again tonight, but I'm willing to wait all night and much of tomorrow." I roll my eyes. "I'm serious."

"You don't even know me." I say. I grab the book from the console. "How about I call you when I finish this?"

"But you don't have my phone number." he says.

"I strongly suspect you wrote it in the book."

He smiles again. "And you say we don't know each other."

* * *

A/N- I hope you enjoyed! Please review!

How about, like, 6 reviews for next? I'll try my best, but it does take a while to try and get it straight. I will try though! :)

6 REVIEWS FOR NEXT CHAPTER


	3. Chapter 3

A/N- So I didn't get as many... But no worries because I'm updating still! Happy day!

Disclaimer: I don't own anything you recognize.

UPDATE: AntriLover5 kindly pointed out to me that canonically, I made a mistake with the date. So this change is just to fix that. :)

**Texts**

* * *

I stayed up pretty late reading _The Price of Dawn_ (Spoiler: the price is blood). It's not_ An Imperial Affliction_, but the protagonist, Staff Sergeant Max Mayhem, is relatively likeable despite killing no fewer than 118 living things in 284 pages.

So, as a result, I got up late this morning, Thursday. Mom's policy is to never wake me up, because one of the job requirements of being a Professional Sick Person is sleeping a lot, so I'm kind of confused when I jolt awake with her hands on my shoulders.

"It's almost ten," she says.

"Sleep fights cancer," I say. "And I was up late reading."

"It must be a hell of a book," she says as she kneels next to the bed and unscrews me from my large, rectangular oxygen concentrator, which I call Philip. Don't ask, it just looks like a Philip.

Mom hooks me up to a portable tank and reminds me I have class. "Did that boy give it too you?" she asks randomly.

"By it, do you mean herpes?"

"You're too much," Mom laughs. "The book, Ross, I meant the book."

"Yeah, he gave me the book."

"I can tell you like him," she says, eyebrows raised, as if questioning what she already knows. I shrug. "I told you Support Group would be worth the while."

"Did you just wait outside the entire time?"

"Yes. I brought some paperwork. Anyway, time to face the day, young man."

"Mom, sleep. Cancer. Fighting."

"I know, love, but there's class to attend. Also, today is..." The glee in her voice is evident.

"Thursday?"

"Did you forget?"

"Maybe.."

"It's Thursday, June 29!" she basically screams.

"You are really excited about knowing the date!" I scream back.

"ROSS! ITS YOUR HALF BIRTHDAY!"

"Ohhh," I say. Mom's really into Celebration Maximization. ITS ARBOR DAY! LET'S HUG TREES AND EAT CAKE! COLUMBUS BROUGHT SMALLPOX TO THE NATIVES; WE SHALL RECALL THE OCCASION WITH A PICNIC! "Well, Happy Half Birthday to me."

"What do you want to do on your special day?" she asks.

"Come home from class and set the world record for number of YouTube videos watched consecutively?"

Mom reaches up to the shelf above my bed and grabs Goldie, the yellow-gold stuffed bear I've had since I was like one, back when it was socially acceptable to name one's friends after their hue.

"You don't want to see a movie with Rocky or Maia or someone?" who are my friends.

That's an idea. "Sure." I say. "I'll text Rocky and see if he wants to go to the mall or something after school."

Mom smiles, hugging the bear. "Is it still cool to go to the mall?"

"I take a lot of pride in not knowing what's cool."

...

I text Rocky, take a shower, get dressed, and then Mom drives me to school. My class is American Literature, a lecture about Frederick Douglass in a mostly empty auditorium, and it's incredibly difficult to stay awake. Forty minutes into the ninety minute class, Rocky texts back.

**Awesomesauce. Happy Half Birthday. Castleton at 3:32?**

Rocky has that packed life that needs to be scheduled down to the minute. I respond:

**Sounds cool. I'll be at the food court.**

Mom drives me directly from school to the bookstore attached to the mall, where I purchase both _Midnight Dawns_ and _Requiem for Mayhem_, the first two sequels to _The Price of Dawn,_ and then I walk over to the huge food court and buy a Coke. It's 3:21.

I watch these kids playing in the pirate ship indoor playground while I read. There's this tunnel that these two kids kept crawling through over and over and they never seem to get tired, which makes me think of Ellington Ratliff and the existentially fraught free throws.

Mom's also in the food court, alone, sitting in a corner where she thinks I can't see her, eating a cheesesteak sandwich and reading through some papers. Probably medical stuff, the paperwork is endless.

At 3:32 exactly, I see Rocky shuffling past the Wok House. He sees me the moment I raise my hand and smiles, speeding up.

"Ross, hey. How's it going?" he pushes his hair out of his face and sits.

"Good, how are you?"

"I don't even know anymore. What is that, Coke?" I nod and hand it to him. He took a sip. "I wish you were at school these days. Some of the girls are just _hot_." I give him and look.

"Like who?" I ask. He proceeds to name four girls we'd attended elementary and middle school with, but I can't picture any of them (It could be because I'm disinterested, but who knows).

"I've been dating Kiersey Clemons for a while, but I don't think it'll last. But enough about me: what's new in the Rossiverse?" he asks.

"Nothing, really," I say.

"Health is good?"

"The same, I guess?"

"Phalanxifor!" he smiles. "So you could just live forever, right?"

"Probably not forever," I say.

"But basically," he says. "What else is new?"

I think of telling him I'm seeing a boy, or at least seen a movie with one, just because I know it'll surprise him. Sure, he knows about my sexuality, but he'd probably laugh. Plus, I don't have much to brag about, so I just shrug.

"What you got there?" He nods towards my book.

"Oh, it's a sci-if. I've kinda gotten into it."

"Not surprised. Wanna shop?"

...

After we finish at a couple stores, I tell him I need to go home. We make plans to hang out again, and we go our ways.

I don't go home, though. I told Mom to pick me up at six, and though I figure she's either in the mall somewhere or in the parking lot, I still want the next two hours to myself.

I like my mom, but her perpetual nearness sometimes makes me feel weirdly nervous. And I like Rocky, too. I really do. But three years removed from proper full-time schoolic exposure to my peers, I feel a certain unbridgeable distance between us. I think my school friends wanted to help me through my cancer, but they eventually found out that they couldn't. For one, there's no _through_.

So I excuse myself on the grounds of pain and fatigue, as I often had over the years when seeing Rocky or any of my other friends. In truth, it always hurts. It always hurts not to breathe like a normal person, incessantly reminding your lungs to be lungs, forcing yourself to accept as unsolvable the clawing scraping inside-out ache of underoxygenation. So I wasn't lying, exactly. I was just choosing among truths.

I find a bench surrounded by an Irish Gifts store, the Fountain Pen Emporium, and a baseball cap outlet—a corner of the mall even Maia, my fashionista friend, won't shop. And I start reading _Midnight Dawns._

It features a sentence-to-corpse ration of nearly 1:1, and I tear through it without ever looking up. I like Staff Sergeant Max Mayhem, even though he doesn't have much in the way of a technical personality, but mostly I like that his adventures keep happening. There are always more bad guys to kill and more good guys to save. New wars start before the old were won. I haven't read a real series like this since I was a kid, and it's exciting to live again in an infinite fiction.

Twenty pages from the end, things start to look pretty bleak for Mayhem, as he was shot seventeen times while attempting to rescue a hostage from the enemy. But, as a reader, I don't despair. The war effort will go on without him. There can—and will—be sequels starring his cohorts: Specialist Manny Loco and Private Jasper Jacks and the rest.

I'm just about done when this little girl with barretted braids appears in front of me and says, "What's that in your nose?"

I reply, "Um, it's called a cannula. These tubes give me oxygen and help me breathe." Her father swoops in and says disapprovingly, "Jackie," but I say, "No no, it's okay," because it totally is, and then Jackie asks, "Would they help me breathe, too?"

"I dunno. Let's try." I take it off and let Jackie stick the cannula in her nose and breathe. "Tickles," she says.

"I know, right?"

"I think I'm breathing better," she says.

"Yeah?"

"Yeah."

"Well, I wish I could give you my cannula, but I kind of really need the help." I already feel the loss. I focus on my breathing as Jackie hands the tubes back to me. I give them a quick swipe with my sweater sleeve, lace the tubes behind me ears, and put the nubbins back in place.

"Thanks for letting me try it," she says.

"No problem."

"Jackie," her father says again, and this time I let her go.

I return to the book, where Staff Sergeant Max Mayhem is regretting that he had but one life to give for his country, but I keep thinking about that little kid, and how much I liked her.

The other thing about Rocky, I guess, was that it could never again feel natural to talk to him. Any attempts to feign normal social interactions are just depressing because it's so glaringly obvious that everyone I speak to for the rest of my life would feel awkward and self-conscious around me, except kids like Jackie who just didn't know any better.

Anyway, I really do like being alone. I like being alone with poor Staff Sergeant Max Mayhem, who—oh, come on, he's not going to _survive_ those seventeen bullet wounds, is he?

(I later found that yes, he lives.)

* * *

A/N- So, a little delve into Ross' "side" life, away from Support Group and hospitals and such. :)

4 OR MORE REVIEWS TO CONTINUE


	4. Chapter 4

A/N- I feel extremely cruel but I'm pretty much free the rest of the summer so I'm gonna try and update every couple days. :)

P.S. Don't fight me for changing a fictional character in a fictional story's name, please. I wanna make this my own as much as I can(And I'm only saying this because it's happened before). And I kinda but not really changed the name of the author too.. If you care, let me know I guess. :-)

Disclaimer: I don't own anything you recognize.

_**Texts**_

* * *

I go to bed a little early, earlier than the night before. I crawl under the comforter of my queen-sized, pillow topped bed, my favourite place to be. And I start reading_ An Imperial Affliction_ for the billionth time.

_AIA_ is about a girl named Tessa —also the narrator— and her one-eyed mom, who's a professional gardener and overobsessed with tulips. They have a lower-middle-class life in a small California town until Anna gets this rare blood cancer.

But it's not a cancer book, because cancer books freaking suck. Like, in virtually all cancer books, the cancer person starts a charity that raises money to fight cancer, right? And this whole commitment to charity reminds them of the essential goodness of humanity and makes them feel loved and encouraged because they'll have a cancer curing legacy. But in _AIA_, Tessa says that being a cancer person who starts a cancer charity is a bit narcissistic, so she starts The Tessa Foundation for People with Cancer Who Want to Cure Cholera.

Also, Tessa is honest about all of it in a way no one else really is: throughout the book, she refers to herself as "the side effect", which is totally true. Cancer kids are, essentially, side effects of the relentless mutation that made the diversity of life possible. So, as the story goes on, she gets sicker, the treatments and disease racing to kill her, and her mum falls in love with a Dutch tulip trader that Tessa calls the Dutch Tulip Man. The Dutch Tulip Man has a lot of money and very eccentric ideas about how to treat cancer, but Tessa thinks he might be a conman and maybe not even Dutch. And just as the maybe-Dutch man and her mom are about to get married, and Tessa is gonna start this weird new treatment regimen involving wheatgrass and low doses of arsenic, the book ends right in the middle of

I know it's a very literary decision and everything and probably part of why I love the book so much, but there is something to recommend a story that actually _ends_. And if it can't, then it should at least continue into perpetuity like with Staff Sergeant Max Mayhem and friends.

I understand the story ends because Tessa dies or gets too sick to write and this ending-in-mid-sentence thing is supposed to reflect how life actually ends and stuff, but there are characters other than Tessa in the story, and it seems unfair that I'll never find out what happens to them. I've written, care of his publisher, at least a dozen letters to Peter Clark, each asking for answers on what happens at the end of the story: whether the Dutch Tulip Man is a conman, if Tessa's mom marries him, what happens to Tessa's hamster that her mom hates, whether Tessa's friends graduate— that kind of stuff. But he hasn't responded.

_An Imperial Affliction_ is the only book Peter Clark has written, and all anyone knows about him is that after the book came out, he moved from the States to the Netherlands and became kind of reclusive. I imagine that he's working on a sequel set in the Netherlands, maybe Tessa's mom and the Dutch Tulip Man end up moving there and trying to start a new life. But it's been ten years since _An Imperial Affliction_ came out, and Clark hasn't published so much as a blog post. I can't wait forever.

As I reread, I keep getting distracted imagining Ellington Ratliff reading the same words. I wonder if he likes it.. Or if he's just dismissed it as pretentious.

I remember my promise to call after reading _The Price of Dawn_, so I find his number of the cover page and text him.

**_Price of Dawn review: too many bodies. Not enough adjectives. How's AIA?_**

He replies quickly.

**_As I recall, you promised to CALL after you finished, not text._**

And so, I call.

"Ross Shor," he says upon answering.

"So have you read it?"

"Well, I'm not quite finished," he says. "It's 651 pages long and I've had twenty-four hours."

"How far are you?" I say.

"453."

"And?" I probably come off as too excited. But, I am, so..

"I will withhold judgment until I'm done. However, I will say I'm a little embarrassed to have given you_ The Price of Dawn_." he says.

"Don't be. I'm already on _Requiem for Mayhem_." I say.

"A wonderful addition to the series. So, okay, is this tulip guy a crook? I'm getting a bad vibe from him."

"No spoilers," I grin.

"If he's anything other than a total gentleman, I'm gonna gouge his eyes out."

"So you're into it."

"Withholding judgement! When can I see you?"

"Certainly not until you finish An Imperial Affliction." I enjoy being coy.

"Then I better hang up and start reading," he says.

"You better," I say, and the line clicks dead without another word.

Flirting is new. But I like it.

* * *

This morning I have Twentieth-Century American Poetry at MCC. This old woman gives a lecture where she manages to talk for ninety minutes about Sylvia Plath without ever quoting a word of Sylvia Plath.

When I get out of class, Mom is idling at the curb in front of the building.

"Did you just wait here the whole time?" I ask as she hurries around to help me haul my cart and tank into the car.

"No, I picked up the dry cleaning and went to the post office."

"And then?"

"I have a book to read," she replies.

"And I'm the one who needs to get a life," I smile, and she tries to smile back, but there's something flimsy in it.

After a second, I say, "Wanna go to a movie?"

"Sure. Anything you wanna see?"

"Let's just do the thing where we go and see whatever starts next." She closes the door and walks around to the driver's side. We drive over to the Castleton theatre and watch a 3-D movie about talking hamsters. It's kinda funny, actually.

When I get out of the movie, I have four texts from Ellington.

**_Tell me my copy is missing the last twenty pages or something._**

**_Ross Shor, tell me I have not reached the end of this book._**

**_OH MY GOD DO THEY GET MARRIED OR NOT WHAT IS THIS_**

**_I guess Tessa died and so it just ends? CRUELTY. Call me when you can. Hope all's okay._**

So when I get home I go to the backyard and sit down on the rusting latticed patio chair and call him. It's cloudy, typical Indiana: the kind of weather that boxes you in. Our small backyard is dominated by my childhood swingset, which is looking pretty waterlogged and pathetic.

Ellington picks up on the third ring. "Ross Shor," he says.

"So welcome to the sweet, sweet torture of reading An Imperial—" I stop when I hear violent sobbing on Ellington's end. "Are you okay?"

"I'm grand," Ellington says. "I am, however, with Riker, who seems to be decompensating." More wailing. Like the death cries of an injured animal. Ell turns his attention to Riker. "Dude. Dude. Does Support Group Ross make this better or worse? Riker. Focus. On. Me." After a minute, Ell says to me, "Can you meet us at my house in twenty minutes?"

"Sure," I say, and hang up.

* * *

A/N- because I'm cruel, I'm stopping now. But I will try to have the next one up very soon. :)


	5. Chapter 5

A/N- okay I'm sorry, hate me... I started school and got distracted, what with choir and me ACTUALLY DOING JAZZ THIS YEAR and musical and that lovely shit...

(Ever heard of 'Guys and Dolls'? Yeah, I'm excited:D)

I'm gonna shut up now cause you probably don't care. xD

Disclaimer: I don't own anything you recognize.

* * *

If you could drive in a straight line, it takes literally five minutes to get from my house to Ellington's house, but you can't because Holliday Park is in between us.

Despite it being a geographical inconvenience, I really like the park. When I was little, I would splash through the White River with my dad and he would always throw me up into the sky, and I would reach my arms out as I flew and he would do the same, and then we'd both realize our arms weren't going to touch and no one was going to catch me. It would kind of scare the shit out of us, in the best way. I would hit the water, legs thrashing, and then come up for air completely fine and I would say, "Again, Daddy!"

I pull into the driveway, these memories still swirling through my mind. I cart my tank behind me and walk up to the door. Ell's dad answers.

"Just Ross," he says. "Good to see you."

"Ellington said I could come over?" I say.

"Yeah, he and Riker are in the basement." And there's wailing from below. "That would be Riker," Ell's dad says, and shakes his head. "Cheryl had to go for a drive. That sound... Anyway, I guess you're wanted downstairs. Can I carry your, uhm, tank?"

"No, I'm good. Thanks, though, Mr. Ratliff," I say.

"George." he says.

I'm anxious to go down there. Listening to people howl in distress isn't one of my favourite things.. But, I go.

"Ross Shor," Ellington says as hears my steps. "Riker, Ross from Support Group is coming down. Ross, gentle reminder: Riker's in the middle of a... psychotic episode."

Ellington and Riker are sitting on the floor, staring up at a giant television. The screen is split between the two players points of view, Riker's on the left and Ellington's on the right. They're soldiers fighting in a bombed-out city. I recognize the place from _The Price of Dawn_. As I approach them, it seems usual; two guys sitting in front of a TV pretending to kill people.

Only when I move closer, I see Riker's face. Tears streaming down his red cheeks, his face obviously pained. He stares straight at the screen, not so much as a glance towards me, and howls, smashing the buttons on his controller. "How are you, Ross?" Ellington asks.

"I'm okay," I say. "Riker?" No reply. Not even the slightest hint that he's aware of my presence. Just tears.

Ellington glances away from the screen. "You look nice," he says. I gaze down at my skinny jeans and plaid shirt. "Most guys wouldn't even think of wearing that, especially in the middle of summer. I like when they're like, y'know, 'I'm gonna go see a guy who's having a nervous breakdown, a guy who's connection to sight itself is tenuous, and goddamnit, I am gonna wear this nice shirt.'"

"And yet, Riker won't so much as glance at me. Too in love with Laura, I suppose," I joke, which results in a large sob.

"Bit of a touchy subject," Ellington says."Riker, I don't know about you, but I have a sense we're being outflanked." And then back to me, "Riker and Laura are no longer a concern, but he doesn't wanna talk about it. He just wants to cry and play _The Price of Dawn_."

"Fair," I say.

"Riker, I'm concerned about our spot. If you agree, head over to that power house, and I'll cover you." Riker runs toward a plain building while Ellington fires a machine gun in a series of quick little bursts and running behind him.

"Anyway," Ellington says to me, "It doesn't hurt to talk. If you have any words of advice."

"I actually think his reaction is appropriate," I say as a burst of gunfire from Riker kills and enemy soldier, who had peeked his head out from behind a pickup truck. Quite stupidly.

Ellington nods at the screen. "Pain demands to be felt," he says, which is a line from_ An Imperial Affliction_. "You're sure there'd no one behind us?" he asks Riker. Seconds later, tracer bullets start whizzing over their heads. "Oh, damnit, Riker," Ellington says. "I don't mean to be rude in your moment of weakness, but you've let us be outflanked, and now there's nothing between the terrorists and the school." Riker's character takes of towards the fire, zig-zagging down an alley.

"You could go over the bridge and circle back," I suggest.

Ellington sighs. "Unfortunately, the bridge is already under enemy control thanks to my lovely partners strategizing."

"Me?" Riker says breathily. " Me?! You're the one who suggested we hole up in the power house."

Ell turns away from the screen for a second and flashes a crooked smile at Riker. "I knew you could talk," he says. "Now let's go save some fictional children."

Together, they run down the alley, firing and hiding at the proper moments, until they reach the single-room schoolhouse. They crouch behind a wall across the road and kill off the enemy one by one.

"Why do they want in the school?" I say.

"They want the kids as hostages," Ellington answers. His shoulders round over his controller, pushing buttons, forearms taut. Riker leans forward to the screen, the controller dancing in his hands. "Get it get it get it..." Ellington mutters. The waves of terrorists continues, and they shoot down every one, shots astonishingly precise.

"Grenade! Grenade!" Ellington should as something flies across the screen, bounces in the doorway of the school, and rolls against the door.

Riker drops his controller, disappointed. "If they can't take hostages, they just kill 'em and say we did it."

"Cover me!" Ellington says as he jumps out from behind the wall and races towards the school. Riker fumbles for his controller and starts firing while the bullets rain down on Ellington, who's shot twice but still runs, Ellington shouting, "YOU CAN'T KILL MAX MAYHEM!" and, with a final flurry of button combinations, he dives onto the grenade, which detonates under him. His body explodes like a geyser and the screen goes red. "MISSION FAILURE," says a computer automated voice, but Ellington seems to think differently as he smiles. He reached into his pocket and pulls out a cigarette, pushing it between his teeth. "Saved the kids," he says.

"Temporarily, " I point out.

"All salvation is temporary," he says. "I bought them a minute. That could be the minute that buys them an hour, the hour that buys them a year. No one's gonna buy them forever, Ross Shor, but my life bought them a minute, and that's not nothing."

"Whoa, okay," I say. "We're just talking about pixelated characters." He shrugs, as if he believes the game might be real. Riker's back to wailing. Ellington snaps his head back to him. "Another go at the mission, corporal?"

Riker shakes his head. He leans over Ellington to look at me and in a strained voice says, "She didn't wanna do it after."

"She didn't want to dump a blind guy," I say. He nods, the steady tears streaming endlessly.

"She said she couldn't handle it," he says. "I'm about to lose my sight and _she_ can't _handle_ it."

I think about the word _handle_, and all of the unholdable things that get handled. "I.. I'm sorry," I say.

He wipes his wet face with his sleeve. Behind his glasses, Riker's eyes seem so big that the rest of his face sort of disappears and it's just these floating eyes staring at me— one real, one glass. "It's unacceptable," he tells me. "Totally unacceptable."

"To be fair," I say, "I mean, she probably _can't _handle it. Neither can you, but she doesn't _have_ to handle it. And you do."

"I kept saying 'always' to her today. 'Always, always, always,' and she just kept talking over me and not saying it back. It was like I was already gone, y'know? 'Always' was a promise! How can you just break the promise?"

"Sometimes people don't understand the promises they're making when they make them," I say.

Riker shot me a look. "Right, yeah. But you keep the promise anyway. That's what love _is._ Love is keeping a promise anyway. Don't you believe in true love?"

I don't answer. I don't have an answer. But I think that if true love did exist, that's a pretty good definition of it.

"Well, I believe in true love," Riker says. "And I love her. And she promised. She _promised me always_." He stands and takes a step towards me. I push myself up, thinking he wants a hug or something, but he just spins back around, like he can't remember why he stood in the first place, and then Ellington and I both see this rage settle in his features.

"Riker," Ell says.

"What?"

"You look a little. Pardon the double entendre, my good friend, but there's something a little worrisome in your eyes."

Suddenly Riker starts kicking his gaming chair, which somersaults back towards Ell's bed. "There we go," Ell says. Riker chases after the chair and kicks it again. "Yes," Ellington says. "Get it. Kick the shit out of that chair!" Riker kicks the chair again, until it bounces against Ell's bed, and then he grabs one of the pillows and starts slamming it against the wall between the bed and the trophy shelf above.

Ellington looks over at me, cigarette still in his mouth, and half smiles. "I can't stop thinking about that book."

"I know, right?"

"He never said what happens to the other characters?"

"No," I tell him. Riker is still throttling the wall with the pillow. "He moved to Amsterdam, which makes me think that maybe he's writing a sequel featuring the Dutch Tulip Man, but he hasn't published anything. He's never interviewed. He doesn't seem to be online. I've written him tons of letters asking what happens to everyone, but he never responds. So... yeah." I stop talking because Ellington doesn't appear to be listening. Instead, he's squinting at Riker.

"Hold on," he mumbles to me. He walks over to Riker and grabs him by the shoulders. "Dude, pillows don't break. Try something that _breaks_."

Riker reaches for a basketball trophy and holds it over his head as if waiting for permission. "Yes," Ellington says. "Yes!" The trophy smashes against the floor, the plastic basketball player's arm breaking off, still grasping the ball. Riker stomps on the trophy. "Yes! Get it!" Ellington says.

And then back to me, "I've been looking for a way to tell my dad that I actually kinda sorta hate basketball, and I think we've found it" the trophies come down one after another, and Riker stomps and screams while Ellington and I stand a few feet away, bearing witness to the madness the poor mangled bodies of plastic basketball players litter the carpet: a ball palmed by a disembodied hand here; two torsoless legs caught midjump there. Riker keeps attacking the trophies, jumping on them with both feet, screaming, breathless, sweaty, until finally he collapses on top of the trophy remnants.

Ellington steps toward him and looks down. "Feel better?" he asks.

"No," Riker mumbles, chest heaving.

"That's the thing about pain," Ellington says, and then glances at me. "It demands to be felt."

* * *

A/N- YAY! Finally another chapter down!

I am working (slowly) on some other projects, and this will be updated as soon as I can, so look forward to that:)


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